Anthropic tested self-replicating AI on 15 $55 Android TV boxes — here's what it showed
itspacedev · reddit · 2026-10-16
Anthropic published research (Oct 12) on AI that can replicate without a datacenter. Key results from the Reddit summary:
- gemma4-26b-a4b sharded across 15 $55 Android TV boxes ran successfully, though at just 0.39 tokens/s
- GLM-5.2 as the agent deployed llama3.1-8b to 8 cloud machines, scoring 8/8 in 4 of 5 runs
- qwen3.5-9b inference setup success rose from 45% in the first generation to 61-84% later, since each generation inherits notes from the previous one
What wasn't shown: no real infection between boxes, a simplified test setup, and Anthropic's own caveat that "we don't yet have a full rogue replicator." They warn small models could reach this level by end of year, and ask defenders to watch for large model file transfers, odd device-to-device traffic, and honeypots.
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